Yeah, I thought Lawrence's argument was interesting. He said:

"People are at just as much, if not more risk, if we don't play. Players will be sent home to their own communities where social distancing is highly unlikely and medical care and expenses will be placed on the families. . .Football is a safe haven for so many people. We are more likely to get this virus in everyday life than playing football. . ."

That the current argument in favor of college football is that the only way people can stay safe is to go into a bubble says a lot about the current state of our nation's response here. Sadly, I think there's a good chance Lawrence is right. I just don't see how or why universities can prioritize providing that to football players over tuition paying students.

Just wondering what people here think.

If football is moved to the he Spring,do the "Money Games" come back ?

And within the college athletics world, there are many young athletes who had the Rona' and were not hit hard by the virus in symptoms as much as they have been pulmonary and heart effects. These have not been widely disclosed because of HIPPA, however, known of within the circle of the medical field of college athletics.

Testing and the cost of testing is also an issue, with cost like a minimum of $25,000 a week to the average MAC school

Ouch.

Despite being from the great state of Nebraska, he went to the same political school as Collins and Lindsey. He calls out things, and then retreats. Agree - he is wrong here though.

Jim Jordan is being consistent, he is ignoring another threat to college athletes.

okay so Purdue is welcoming 40k kids to campus next week. several schools had 10's of thousands of kids on campuses today. how can Purdue keep 40k safe in a open environment but cant make football safe? I am fine with us not playing. But it is funny that i bet you the MAC would still be playing if the money games were still there. I think it is also a little funny that the big 10 and the pac-12 the two conferences that the players basically formed a united front almost a union are the two conferences that don't want to play.

This may be 100% a safety case and that is what people are going to be put forward no matter what the truth is.

i think if you put to negative guys on football field there is very little chance they will come back positive. look at all the schools that over last few weeks that have had zero positive tests. why can that not continue. why cannot football not be played. between kids with negative test results...

I just want a reasonable answer. like i said i am fine if it is unsafe but i don't believe it is more unsafe then going to school or work. or to a restaurant but they are open.

I know there are possible long term complications. But i also know of someone who had covid in march in April in new York. were told they had long term heart damage. They went for a 3 month check up recently and was told the heart had started to heal itself not that it was better. but my point is we are not going to know long term effects for years

It's a contact issue. Theoretically, kids who are just going to class aren't blocking or tackling other students (including students from other schools during games), and aren't lining up shoulder-to-shoulder with four or five other students and within a couple feet of students from other schools. Another issue with student athletes is that they breathe deeply from exertion (and even over-exertion). Plastic shields on helmets would help but might make it more difficult for athletes to breathe because they trap CO2.

Sorry Mr. Swank but what you say is not true! The poster clearly said, Deaths. Florida is 8th and Texas 10th.. You would have been correct if the poster had said Cases.

But here is a truth, football won't be played this fall in Athens..

Good reason to be cautious. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/29633697...

This is definitely what the strategy would have to look like for college football to take place.

The problem is that the testing infrastructure is poor, which makes pulling the above off a) difficult and b) expensive.

Some context that's important:

1) There are currently two approved tests. The first is a rapid test (which gets results in 30 minutes), the second is the 'swab test' (which gives results in 5-7 days). I've purchased a bunch for employees of mine, and a safe estimate is $100 per test.

2) The rapid test is considered unreliable. So much so that many urgent care clinics -- most even -- choose not to offer them. The guidance with rapid testing is that you can take the positive results at face value, but not negative results. All negative results from a rapid test should be sent to a lab for further analysis, which means a 5-7 day delay.

3) If you have access to your own laboratory (which some large Universities may) you can get test results back much faster.

4) A conservative estimate for a single football team and various employees needed to run their operations would be 150 people who need regular testing. You're proposing doing that 2x a week. That's a 30k/week testing bill. Over the course of a shortened season, that's $400,000 for the tests alone.

5) Week 1 is upon you. It's Monday and you play Saturday. You have testing scheduled for Monday and Thursday that week. You test players Monday. Let's say you're very lucky, and you get results back Wednesday. You have a positive case, and due to contact tracing, have another 40 people who were potentially exposed because they were in the locker room at the same time, or live on the same floor. You quarantine and test those 40 immediately. You've increased that week's testing cost by 15%. When do you get those results back? What if you get the positive cases back on Thursday? How do you test before Saturday? Oh, and cool little bonus, now you realize that your testing costs aren't fixed. Exciting.

6) So because testing delays make this complicated -- and downright impossible if you can't get results for 5-7 days like the rest of the country -- you figure out special testing access. Maybe the University's hospital gives your tests priority. Maybe you pay LabCorp a lot to prioritize your tests. Now your testing costs are much higher.

7) You're also, you know, just playing football. While the unemployment rate is at 12%, employers are struggling with the same challenges getting people back to work, keeping them insured, and your student body is paying full tuition without any of the same safeguards, you're dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into playing. . .football. When your mission is to educate, and you insist in the courts over and over that these kids are students first and athletes second.

8) And let's say you get testing priority. That means you're delaying others' test results so you can play football.


It's not actually safe enough. We just sh*t the bed so badly making it safe enough that organizations all over the country -- schools, universities, employers -- are forced into choosing between survival and putting students/employees, etc. in a situation that is not yet safe. The debate is about how unsafe.

There's no question that access to regular testing and structure that forces social distancing and responsibility keeps people safer than those that don't have that. The question is why, in a society that's failed to provide that pretty much across the board, college football players are next in line.

And more specifically, for Universities, the question should be why athletics gets higher priority than academic programs when it comes to testing, social distancing, and the like. If I'm a student paying 70k a year for a mechanical engineering degree at Duke and I'm spending my days watching somebody on Zoom while my University spends a million dollars on testing resources so Duke's football team can go 3-7 in ACC play, I'm showing up at the President's office with a guillotine.

Take a look at University of Buffalo's balance sheet and then make a compelling case that they spent that $100,000 wisely. And then pitch they keep spending like that until January.


It's not just a liability issue, though liability is a piece, too. It's also directly related with the fact that as a country we've failed to create the infrastructure that makes re-opening manageable and affordable. And when that's the case, you're forced to ask important questions about who gets the scant resources.

For a lot of people, the answer seems to be 'college football programs.' Personally, I feel like a much better answer is 'employers who were forced to lay off 20% of working adults.' Different strokes, I guess.

This is why it's downright silly when you said earlier that it's 'stupid to blame Trump for any of this.' There's not another western country on Earth without a national testing and contact tracing strategy. Do you think it's just coincidental that we find ourselves in the situation we're in?

Other countries did the hard work necessary to open up. We didn't. That's why the MAC isn't playing football. It's why the unemployment rate's basically been static for weeks. And it's why school districts all over the country have no idea how to safely reopen 6 months after the first case appeared in America. Because we didn't do any of the things we needed to do. Our leaders are responsible for that, which exactly why so many of the leaders who know how badly they f*cked this up spent yesterday trying to pressure colleges into playing football. Because they know who the failure lies with if football can't happen.

I haven't checked the breakdown recently,but around half of the deaths in NJ were in Nursing Homes and other Long Term Care Facilities,including the State run Veterans Homes.